King Christian X on horseback. Christian X (reigned 1912-1947) was married
to Alexandrine of Mecklenburg-Schwerin; they
had two sons, the later Frederik IX and the
heir presumptive, Knud. In Christian X's
reign two world wars broke out, World War I
(1914-1918) and World War II (1939-1945). World War I ended in German defeat and
opened the possibility of reuniting part of
South Jutland to Denmark. At The
Reunification on 10 June 1920, the King rode
across the old frontier at Taps on a white
horse, whereupon he met the South
Jutlanders at Dybbøl and the Danish South
Schleswigers, whose region remained in
Germany, at Kruså. A stubborn legend has it
that the horse was whitewashed, which he was
not, but probably some sweat stains that
gave the horse dark spots gave rise to the
legend of the whitewashed horse. The horse
came from Visborggaard near Hadsund and
belonged to Knud Danneskiold-Samsøe. His
name was Malgré Tout, and he had been bought
in France in 1916 by Danneskiold-Samsøe, who
otherwise bought only brown horses, but had
been persuaded to buy the white horse also. "Let me have him in spite of all," and "in
spite of all" became the horse's French
name, Malgré Tout. His hoof can be seen
today in the Amalieborg Museum. It has been
silver-plated, and the King used it for pens
and pencils. An inscription on the
silver-plated hoof reads "The White Horse. I bore the King across the frontier, when
South Jutland again became Danish. 10 July
1920." The King lifted a little girl
onto the horse:
"It sounds like a fairy
tale, a legend of old times: A stolen
daughter, much lamented, has come safely
back" are lines from the poem "South
Jutland," 1918, by Henrik Pontoppian. The
wars changed the international security
situation of Europe and Denmark. In the
1930s, during the Great Depression, the
global economic crisis, the King managed to
maintain and strengthen his position as a
national rallying point in a time of drastic
change. This became especially clear after
the German Occupation on 9 April 1940,
where the King in a speech on the radio asked the people to
act with dignity in the face of the occupying power. He
himself continued his daily rides through Copenhagen;
however, in 1942, the King suffered a fall from his horse
and his health was permanently
impaired.

In the evening of 4
May 1945, the
message of
liberation came on
the BBC:"At this very moment
we are notified that
Montgomery has
stated that the
German troops in
Holland,
North-western
Germany, and Denmark
have surrendered.
This is London.
We repeat:
Montgomery has just
now reported that
the German troops in
Holland,
North-western
Germany, and Denmark
have surrendered."

To the right of "VALS", the Spanish film
director Luis Buñuel (1900-1983).

The four portraits below "VALS" depict, from
left to right:
The American writer Ernest Hemingway
(1899-1961), author, among other works, of
"For Whom the Bell Tolls," 1940, and "The
Old Man and the Sea," 1952.
The Austrian philosopher Ludwig
Wittgenstein (1889-1951).
The Irish writer James Joyce
(1882-1941), whose best-known work is
"Ulysses," published in 1914-1922.
The Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev
(1872-1929), who in Paris in 1909 launched
the ballet company "Les Ballets Russes."

At bottom left, a portrait of the French
writer André Bréton (1896-1966), who
in 1924 wrote the literary manifesto of
surrealism, "Manifeste du surrealism," which
also had great importance for the visual
arts.

In the top left corner
of the main field,
harvesters and
tractors referring
to the modernization and
mechanization of
agriculture after World
War II. The most marked
change came with the
tractors, replacing
horses as the main
tractive force.

At the top, "The Mediterranean",
1902-05, after the
bronze statue in MoMA
by the Franco-Catalan
sculptor Aristide Maillol (1861-1944).

Below the burning buildings,
the German field marshal and second Reich president of the
Weimar Republic, Paul von Hindenburg (1847-1934), who in
1933 appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor of the Reich. Next to
Hindenburg, the German emperor Wilhelm II, who abdicated
in 1918 following the German defeat in World War I.

To the right of this, figuresby the Italian painter of
the Scuola Metafisica, Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978).

At the border, bottom center, The Angel of Death with a
Scythe riding over the victims of war in Nørgaard's
interpretation of woodcuts by the Belgian artist Frans Masereel
(1889-1972).

The figure to the right of the angel is a reproduction of the
German artist Wilhelm Lehmbruck's (1881-1919) sculpture
"Dying Warror"/"The Fallen," 1916.Above the warrior, Adolf Hitler speaking in Nuremberg,
where the great annual party assemblies were held. Also in
Nuremberg, the war crimes trials were held.

Diagonally to the left,
above the vagabond, the
revue star and actress
Liva Weel (1897-1952)
who among others performed
lyrics by Poul Henningsen,
including the censored
protest song against the
German Occupation, "Our
Mouths and Hands Are Tied."

King Frederik IX,
Queen Ingrid, and the three princesses, Anne-Marie,
Benedikte, and Margrethe.

King Frederik IX
(reigned 1947-1972) married the Swedish princess Ingrid Victoria
Sofia Louise Margareta (1910-2000) in 1935.
The crown-princely couple had three daughters, Margrethe (born 1940 on 16 April, a
week after the Occupation, and was called a light in dark
times), Benedikte (born 1944), and Anne-Marie (born 1946).

According to the law of succession at the
time, enshrined in the Basic Law, the throne
could pass only to males, and since the
crown-princely couple had daughters, the
throne would therefore pass to the King's
brother, the heir presumptive, Prince Knud,
and from him to his eldest son, Ingolf. The
Lower House of Parliament had considered a
change in the Basic Law, but this required a
referendum in which 45 per cent of eligible
voters voted in favor. In 1939, such a
referendum failed. To accomplish the change,
Prime Minister Erik Eriksen called a new
referendum in 1953 permitting female
succession (also lowering the voting age and
suppressing the Upper House of
Parliament). This time the changes passed,
if barely. During the Occupation, the crown
prince and princess were active in
supporting Danish identity. During Frederik
IX's reign, Denmark abandoned her policy of
neutrality and joined NATO while rapidly
expanding the welfare state. The King's
sense of and understanding of the times led
to a change in the monarchy from being a
closed, exalted institution to being a
symbolic expression of equality, such as the
people experienced it as a result of
modernization. The King, who had the common
touch to a high degree and performed his
duty with humility, died in the evening of
14 January 1972, and the next day the prime
minister, Jens Otto Krag, proclaimed
Margrethe II Queen of Denmark. Frederik IX
was buried outside the walls of Roskilde
Cathedral where Queen Ingrid was also laid
to rest in 2000.

Above King Frederik IX, a retired couple
referring to the National Insurance Act,
which took effect on 1 October 1933 and was
part of the general social reform package
which replaced the old poor law.

Above the couple, the Little Belt Bridge,
dedicated in 1935.

Above thisan airplane referring to
charter tourism, which boomed in the 1960s.

Diagonally to the right of the King, the
newly-weds Princess Margrethe, heir
to the throne, and Prince Henrik
riding a carriage through Copenhagen. The
French count Henri de Laborde de Monpezat
married the heir to the throne on 10 June
1967 in Holmen's Church.

Between the bridal pair and the King, a
soccer goal, goalkeeper's gloves,
and a football.

To the right of the charter plane, symbols
of the Eks School, The Experimental
School of Art, founded in 1961 as a protest
against the Royal Academy. Its main
instigator was Poul Gernes. The basic idea
was collective work processes and free
admission, as well as reform of art and
society. Bjørn Nørgaard began at the Eks
School at 17, having failed to gain
admission to the Academy, where, however, he
later became a professor.

To the right of this, the man in the hat
or Joseph Beuys (1921-1986), a German
conceptual artist, member of Fluxus, and
co-founder of the German Green Party.

In the top right corner of the main field,
the words "FILL IN WITH YOUR OWN
IMAGINATION," a sentence that the
Dano-German Fluxus artist Arthur Köpke
(1928-1977) sometimes wrote on his works. From 1958-63 he ran the legendary Galerie
Køpcke in Copenhagen which became a
meeting-place of the international
avant-garde.

Below the text, the female symbol and a
group of women demonstrating for
equality, for peace, and against apartheid.

To the left of the female group, the Cuban
guerrilla leader Che Guevara
(1928-1967).

Below the group of women, helicopters
and Vietnamese symbolizing the
Vietnam War (1960-1975), a Cold War conflict
heavily covered in the media between the US
and some of its allies and the Soviet Union,
China, and North Vietnam. The war ended in
a historic defeat of the US and victory for
North Vietnam and the Viet Cong (South
Vietnamese communists). Vietnam was
reunited under communist rule.

Between the helicoptersThe Female Christ. In 1969, Lene Adler Petersen, Nørgaard's
spouse, walked naked through the Stock
Exchange building carrying a cross in her
and Nørgaard's happening "The Expulsion from
the Temple/Nude Female Christ I."

To the right of "The Female Christ" a
portrait of the American singer and poet
Bob Dylan
(born 1941), and in front the
British Liverpool band The Beatles
(1962-1970), consisting of John Lennon, Paul
McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr.

In front of the Beatles,
tower blocks from Høje Gladsaxe erected in the early
1960s.

Below the chariot with the royal couple, a motif
from a Social Democratic election poster from
the 1960 campaign, showing a housewife and children
waving goodbye to the family father on his way to
work. The accompanying slogan read "Making Good
Times Better."

To the right of Donald Duck, the Brandenburg Gate,
the last remaining city gate of Berlin. During the
Cold War, the Gate became the symbol of divided
Berlin. In 1987, US President Ronald Reagan gave a
speech before the Gate asking Mikhail Gorbachev to
tear down the Berlin Wall.

Under the Brandenburg Gate, the Berlin Wall,
erected 1961 and dividing West from East Berlin. It
was the GDR (German Democratic Republic) that closed
the boundary to West Berlin, officially to protect
the East Berliners and East Germans from fascism. The Wall became a symbol of the Cold War, the tense
relationship between the NATO and Warsaw Pact
countries from the end of World War II until the
Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. The Fall of the
Wall in 1989 came to symbolize the end of the Cold
War.

Below the bunker, the arrival of British
Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery
at City Hall Square, Copenhagen, 12 May
1945.

To the right of Montgomery, the RAF
bombardment of the Shell Building 21 March
1945, intended to destroy the Gestapo's
files and liberate Resistance leaders held
as hostages in the building. The raid went
partly wrong. In error, the French School
became a target and 104 persons present at
the school lost their lives.

Below the burning Shell Building, the place of execution in Ryvangen, where
Danish Resistance members were tied to poles
and shot by German squads. A white square
was affixed to their chests, directing fire
to the heart.

To the left of this, Danish soldiers on 9
April 1940.

Below the poles, the People's Strike in
Copenhagen in the Summer of 1944, when
the entire working population downed tools
in protest against German executions of
resisters.

Below this, sabotage of a railroad track,
the saboteur is Flemming Juncker
(1904-2002), a Danish landowner and floor
manufacturer, leader of the Resistance in
Jutland and member of the Hvidsten Group.

To the left of the railroad,
concentration camps and below them the
Jews escaping to Sweden in October 1943.

Motiver i
borduren/Border Motifs

Øverste
venstre halvdel/Top left half

1

Kong
Christian 10.'s rigsvåben/King
Christian X's coat of arms.

2

Engelsk
suffragette. Suffragetterne var de
kvinder som i årene frem til 1. verdenskrig
tog militante midler i brug for at få
gennemført stemmeret for kvinderne i
England.British suffragette. Women's
suffrage (right to vote) movements exist in
the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
particularly in Great Britain and United
States.

The first time Bjoern Nørgaard had made use of textiles
and weaving was when he designed the sketches for the
Queen's tapestries given in honour of HM Queen Margrethe
II's 50th birthday on April 16, 1990, by the Danish business
community. They were woven at the Beauvais tapestry
manufactory in Paris (Le Mobilier National et les
Manufactures Nationales des Gobelins et de Beauvais). The
tapestries describing the period of Danish history from the
Viking Age to Modern time, were in 2000 placed in the
Knight's Hall, the Royal Reception Rooms,
Christiansborg
Palace. At the inauguration ceremony April 12 HM the Queen
donated the tapestries to the State. The sketches belong to
Køge Skitsesamling (Sketch Collection).